Yahoo Inc. is set to allow outsiders to create new services on their consumer e-mail program, in the broadest move the Web has yet seen to enlist independent programmers to build a company’s products for it. This is reported by Reuters. Yet another example of companies opening up their innovation pipeline to leverage the available knowledge outside the company.

The goal is to spark development of thousands of new e-mail applications built not only by Yahoo engineers but by outside companies and individuals. They believe that there is more to be learned from the outside, and that Yahoo doesn’t have the capabilities to design everything the user wants. “Yahoo is a very large company but we can’t build every applications that a user might want” says Chad Dickerson, head Yahoo’s software developer relations program to Reuters.
But as the developer blog indicates it is not only the email program that will be opened up, but also other programs. The first public API is for Yahoo Photo’s Developers can now write application that have read/write access to Yahoo! data. Yahoo uses a Browser Based Authentication mechanism to enable third-party application developers use Yahoo data. Read the rest of this entry »